I think some tried some things. Barnes and Nobles did some. The results weren't successful, and that was pretty discouraging to other book store owners.

As book store owner, I really think it's an irrational decision to invest heavily in fighting Amazon. You're chances of success are pretty slim.

As for big businesses ? Well, there's Walmart, Target.

In the end, the e-commerce industry is a place where most of the market share would be controlled by a few large companies. That was clear from the beginning.

""They haven't tried anything. Every business being beaten by Amazon""

This again, is glib.

To suggest that you somehow know all these vendors have 'not tried anything'.

How about lobbying government to subsidize their business like the US Government subsidizes delivery? Or the VAT tax breaks that Amazon gets? Or the fact that Amazon is dumping merchandise on the US by selling for negative margins, paid for by profits out of AWS?

A local bookstore has 6 staff. They have no power.

Amazon started off with 21 employees - do you think that’s a meaningfully different number? Amazon at that didn’t didn’t get any of the advantages you list. So do think it might be worth considering what they did differently at the beginning, when they were the tiny business, going up against huge and powerful companies like Barnes and Nobles?

https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-amazon-history-fa...